Author Archive
Keyword Placement
We had a few questions about keyword placement recently. Identifying keywords for SEO purposes is one of the most important search engine marketing tasks to accomplish, but once you get those keywords, what do you do with them? I took some screen shots and highlighted key areas on a site below as a quick guide. In the example below the word “keyword” is the primary keyword and the word “website” is secondary.
Keyword Location Overview
In addition to adding keywords to your content, it is also important to place them within the HTML body of your website. Below are areas within the header of your page that should include keywords:
Notice the TITLE tag and also the META tags
Finally within the body of your actual page, there are some “behind the scenes” keyword placement techniques highlighted below:
Keywords within the H1 tags are very important
Keywords in ALT tags and Titles of images and links are also great.
Great UI Quote
UI that looked sexy in Photoshop almost always looks overdesigned when we try it for real in the browser. Here’s a hypothesis. Simple and useful designs just don’t seem good enough when they are dead pixels. They need to be brought to life before they can be appreciated. Until that happens we overcompensate with garnish.
- Ryan From 37Signals
Microsoft Surface Project Update
Take a look at our progress on our Microsoft Surface project. I am working with Ohio State on a pilot project for the Microsoft Surface, which will be located in the new student union. The surface is a new table top computing technology that incorporates some pretty cool concepts such as multi-touch and multi-user interaction. The unit is durable enough that we currently have it in a food court where students have been eating off it.
I am on a team of developers writing the application. In the video you can see a trivia game that we worked with some students to write. My role is Project Manager/Creative Director/Technical Architect. The game was my concept although the idea is heavily inspired by the BW3’s styled trivia game. I also helped with some of the technical architecture but the students did most of the programming work. We showed them how we want the system to be built, what technologies we wanted them to use, some other technical guidance and they did a great job taking it from there. Our next step is to clean up some of the user interface and bring in a graphic designer to make it look really good.
The other cool thing about this video is it was taken with our new SLR camera. We bought a Canon 7D. The goal is to be able to take some more of the images displayed on the sites we develop and even shoot some footage if necessary. The camera shoots in 30fps at 1080p. This should help cut costs instead of outsourcing to photographers and production companies.
PHP vs ASP.NET
Have you ever talked to a NASCAR fan and asked him Chevy or Ford? Or a college football fan and asked Ohio State or Michigan? Or how loaded is the question, are you a Republican or a Democrat? It’s pretty funny how it’s really hard to find someone with an unbiased reaction to those questions. If YOU are asked one of those questions, you almost don’t even want to answer because there’s a 50/50 chance you’ll end up in some sort of endless argument. (Read about halfway down this article to see how loaded the question Pepsi or Coke? can be) The same holds true for computer geeks when you ask PHP or .NET? Programmers seem to either be gung-ho Open Source advocates or Micorosft worshipers.
Well, folks, the good people at Home Base Web Solutions are here to offer an unbiased overview of the two for your reading enjoyment. We do realize that if you are reading this article, you probably are thinking of programming your own website rather than paying us to do it for you and we are OK with that. If your site fails, give us a call and we will make it right.
First of all, before getting into specific pros vs cons of the PHP vs .NET, there are some important general concepts to understand:
- First and foremost, .NET is a framework, PHP is a language. .NET can be developed using many different languages, the most popular are C# and VB.
- .NET is proprietary, PHP is Open Source. Support IS available for both. Microsoft support may come from certified professionals, but sometimes costs money. PHP support is more readily available, but may come from forums with no guarantees.
- .NET may include compiled code (.dll’s), PHP is interpreted at run time. If designed properly, this should result in faster loading pages in .NET… however, unless you are doing some sort of very complex operations behind the scenes, the difference is negligible. There are probably specific examples out there where one method is faster than another, but there are many variables that go into how fast a page will load. If the page is designed well, it will load fast. A nanosecond either way won’t bring down anyone’s server.
Now below is a quick comparison of some general features comparing PHP vs .NET.
| Features | .NET | PHP |
| Easier and quicker to learn | X | |
| Faster to deploy on small websites | X | |
| Superior development environment | X | |
| Built in plumbing for a wide variety of functionality | X | |
| Designed to scale | X | |
| Loosely typed, easier to develop small applications | X | |
| Generally quicker to make simple changes to existing apps/sites | X | |
| Hosting costs are generally the same | X | X |
| Precompiled (.NET) vs. Interpreted at run time (PHP) | X | |
| More control over the entire HTTP pipeline using HttpModules and HttpHandlers | X | |
| Debugging and error handling capabilities | X | |
| Object Oriented framework: inheritance, polymorphism, overloading, etc. | X |
Now before we get a million comments about the quick run-down above, it is important to note that it IS possible to develop object oriented code using PHP and just because .NET has some neat debugging capabilities doesn’t mean that they’re always immediately easy to implement. There is plenty of material out there that argues tooth and nail either way, but in our general experience, we have found everything above to hold true… for us.
At Home Base we may use either .NET or PHP depending on the application. Small standard web applications such as blogs, brochure websites, standard shopping carts, and basic content management systems are done using pre-existing open source, PHP based solutions. WordPress, Joomla, and a host of shopping cart solutions are out there. They are easy to install and easy to customize. An entry level programmer can open up a PHP based website and probably figure out some of the nuts and bolts of the system to make some minor changes.
For large custom applications, our preference is to use .NET. The scalability, built in components, and inherent object oriented framework provide solid fundamentals for a well designed application. .NET also provides us a platform to more easily implement a multi-tiered framework, which allows us to use some development techniques such as test driven development, or the ability to plug in specialists into specific layers if ever necessary. .NET also opens the door for us to have multiple User Interface gateways. We could develop an application and interchange a web interface with a mobile interface with a desktop interface or even some custom robotic pimp shit interface that hasn’t been invented yet. If your application is properly layered, you can interchange all of those UI’s without touching your core. (I am currently developing an application for the Microsoft Surface. 90% of my development and testing will be using a simulator. This is all possible, and easy, with proper layering.) We will save the benefits of an N-Tier software architecture for another post though.
We also prefer MS SQL Server 2005/2008 vs MySQL, but again, that’s another post. You can technically use either database application for either PHP or .NET, but typically SQL Server comes hand in hand with .NET and the same holds true for MySQL with PHP. If your database is small (<100,000 records) and your server load isn’t at CNN levels, MySQL should work fine.
I will try to update this post with some good links to similar content.
AGILE / SCRUM Project Management in under 10 minutes
I found this excellent video that wraps up AGILE in a nutshell.
Hamid Shojaee covers all the SCRUM bases: product back logs, release back logs, team roles, burndown charts, and more.
Acuho-I presentation update
My presentation: Juggling stakeholders, vendors, and complex integration points has been accepted for the ACUHO-I conference in October. I am half excited, half nervous because it has to be an hour long and it will be at a national conference. I was on a “panel of experts” at the StarRez Housing Software conference last year, but I didn’t really have to say much. It is really exciting to get the opportunity to speak at something like this, however, it is the middle of September already and I have a lot of work to do on the content. 
Another Update: Apparently the I in ACUHO-I stands for International. I am not sure if that means “Canana can come and play too,” but I guess I am technically presenting at an international conference.
OSU HomeBase … new look… same purpose -> none
Tailgating, Ohio State Football
The brainchild website of the business, OSU Home Base underwent a new look. OSU Home Base is a website dedicated to our alumni group and Ohio State Football. The purpose is to serve as a general forum for old friends to stay connected and to meet new friends with common interests. I created this site as an undergrad student and during one of its many transformations, I got a lot of attention and a few job offers. I got enough offers, in fact, that I decided to go a little bigger and start my own business… and Home Base Web Solutions was born.
Green Leaf EAS website complete
Green Leaf Energy Audit Services
The Green Leaf Energy Auditing Services website launched this week highlighting another complete solution provided by Home Base Web. Using a Word Press Template, we customized the logo, designed the website, and set up both web hosting and email services… all in about a week.
It was a pleasure working with Gary and Cindy Ungerer and we wish them the best in their new business venture. We look forward to offering our continued support for all of our customers for all of their online needs.